If you’re pregnant and seeking midwifery care, welcome! If you’re making decisions about pregnancy and the people you’d like to invite into your circle of intimates, we’re glad you’re here. And if you’re looking for personal health care, but don’t need birth services, have a look at our primary care and wellness page. Kay Jackson, CNM, ARNP, owner of Off the Grid Midwifery & Health—and Stacey Oberle, our Office Goddess—welcome you Off the Grid, where we do everything a little differently…

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Our expertise includes safe waterbirth, hospital-based VBAC, use of hypnosis in labor (hypnobirthing, Hypnobabies), and personalized postpartum support. Kay has a special interest is in perinatal and postpartum mental health using genetic testing and computer diagnostics to guide personalized treatment. Kay offers respectful, person-centered care for pregnancy, birth, and beyond.

 

OUR BIGGEST DIFFERENCE: Kay is the South Sound’s ONLY independently practicing midwife able to provide Midwifery Model continuity of care both in- and out-of-hospital. We have privileges to practice at The Birthing Inn (Tacoma’s only freestanding birth center), and St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma. This means that if you choose The Birthing Inn (an out-of-hospital location), but there is a problem requiring medical help, we would all go to St. Joe's together, where Kay would admit you and continue responsibility for your care, just as when you were at The Birthing Inn together. You would not be given over to an on-call or "no-Doc" obstetrician (no-Doc = pejorative for a person who has no doctor; implies indigence), as is the unfortunate case for most independent midwives and their clients. 

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The fear that “some kind of emergency” during labor might result in a chaotic trip away from your birth center and your midwife to an unfamiliar hospital with an unknown obstetrician where rough handling and frightening procedures ultimately lead to a Cesarean—can be laid to rest IF your midwife has hospital privileges. Because Off the Grid Midwidwifery does have privileges at St. Joe's, we can admit our clients in labor to the hospital when needed, even if labor started elsewhere. If you'd hoped to be at The Birthing Inn, but labor became suffering with no reasonable end in sight, we would call the hospital to let them know we're coming, travel with you by ambulance (or private car), and your family would follow. On arrival, you'd be admitted with Kay as your "attending provider." We'd write orders for care and help the nurses see to your comfort. As long as you and baby were stable, you were made comfortable, and labor began progressing normally, we wouldn't necessarily involve an obstetrician.

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True emergency help is rarely required, but “OB hospitalists”—obstetricians who are on staff at the hospital—are always available. Otherwise, Off the Grid Midwifery partners with Dr. Steven Maynard, an obstetrician in private practice who kindly lends his help to many South Sound community midwives, but only when asked. He does not interrupt your care or step in unless invited.

 

You can be undecided about where you want to give birth---you've got a whole pregnancy to think about that question (there's a reason for our 45-minute prenatal visits). You can be assured that barring catastrophic weather, the midwife you’ve come to know will be there to care for you in labor. We are NOT part of a large, faceless on-call group. We will be with you throughout actively progressing labor. Either in- or out-of-hospital, depending on your choice and your pregnancy's health.

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We want you to be comfortable in your decision as to place of birth. Your best birth plan rests in the provider (midwife or obstetrician) you choose, and in the place of birth. These will determine whether your informed requests for staying upright and moving in labor, a sidelying position for birth, delayed cord clamping, bathing the baby, and keeping your own placenta need to be enforced with a formal birth plan. Midwives not entrenched in one of the more hostile hospital environments tend to view these requests as components promoting a healthy birth. Nurses may be influenced by the culture of a hospital and its "policies" for better or worse. We've done some of the work for you as Kay partners with St. Joe's over other area hospitals that aren't as "friendly" to birthing people, their babies, their midwives, or doulas. We hope to help you discover where you will be most comfortable for birth, as your comfort and feeling of safety has a measurable effect on labor.